This might seem like a weird post to make, but I'm writing it based on some of the survey feedback I've gotten so far, both from you, the playerbase, and internally from the Staff team. It's important to me that people are recognised for the work they do, and it's equally important people have an understanding as to how, this is why the Staff Guides are publicly available on our wiki, you are able to directly see how we do things and be a part of our procedures.
With that in mind, I need to apply this logic to myself as well. Unfortunately I feel there are a few misconceptions going around with how I run things and divide my work. Some include:
- You work on new features as a primary objective, bug fixing as a secondary objective.
- You only do what you feel like doing.
Both of these are false, but it's not too hard to see why people feel that way. So let's delve a little deeper into how I do things! :)
Balance - it's important!
Before we get into it, there's one statement that I hope everyone and their dog on this server understands and embraces. I tire it out to death because it's true.
- Life comes first, everything else is secondary. Seriously.
If I have work deadlines, commitments with friends, etc it doesn't really matter what state the server is in. Chances are, the server can live without me (and you). You might think you're dedicating more time to something you enjoy (and that could be right!), but often that isn't the full story. When we decide something as simple as "oh I'll skip going out with my friends/sleep/etc to <fix this issue/finish this building/write a few more lines in #politics>
" we are saying that our wellbeing can be put on hold. This is never the case (as much as I've tried haha).
While it is true that playing on this server makes a part of all our lives, it's always a balancing act at the end of the day. Everyone who plays on this server has a rich and fulfilling life of their own, I'm not saying ditch DC everytime something comes up, but you really shouldn't be sacrificing your wellbeing in other aspects just to try and "satisfy" this part of your life because you think you can. It's OK to decide to spend more time on DC when you've had a packed week, maybe you have already been going out and decide to trade one more night out playing DC - that's IS an example of balacing things healthily.
What is not an example of balancing things is where there is obviously a net negative (loosing sleep for nothing), or at the expense of something you could actually benefit from.
It's in my interests as a server owner to promote this message, because honestly a lot of players I've seen over the years lose sight of what matters and end up leaving the server on a bitter note. Some end up also leaving abruptly/sooner than we would expect too, and almost all these ex-players end up in resentment in one form or another. This is usually because they realise this too late, and haven't left having developed these habits earlier. Balancing your other activities with DC is a skill that is transferrable anywhere, if there's one thing I want you to take out of this blog post, I want it to be this above all.
Ok, now that's out of the way - my priorities!
How do I prioritise things
We all know my time is limited and I need to make trade offs on what I do and don't do. I haven't mastereed this yet, but by the day I like to think I'm getting close. I work based on these priorities:
- The Server itself
- The Government
It's not very complicated, basically I work on the server first - be that bug fixes, staffing, coaching new trial moderators, resolving tickets, it is a full basket and needs my attention first as a server owner. After that, I have commited myself to being a Secretary and other jobs/activities within the Government. You'll notice I haven't slotted enjoying the server last, or anywhere for that fact. When I feel tired or overwhelmed while I'm working on DC I ask myself whether I want to be doing something on DC for fun or elsewhere, and then I just immediately act on that. That's why you'll often see me abruptly leave a voice channel or say 'brb', taking a brain break when you need it shouldn't be a scheduled activity - it needs to work for you (it certainly isn't a chore!).
When I wake up the first thing I do DC-wise is just read over what I've been pinged/DMd about. You lot have been doing a better job of putting things in tickets and pinging me in them, or other desiganted channels as appropriate. It's appreciated, because I will forget otherwise (sorry :P), please continue to do this!! After this, some time during the day if I decide to work on DC I tackle server stuff in roughly this order.
Notice how I said DC-wise, implying its just the first things I do when I get around to DC, that's because my job isn't DC - it isn't anyones. Make sure you're taking care of yourself first when you wake up, not a Minecraft server!
- Tickets
- What can I complete right now?
- What needs to be written down to do later?
- Has previous tickets I've engaged with been closed out? If not, figure out why.
- Follow Ups
- I tend to DM and message a lot of developers or other server owners for things, be it to fix things for me or to get a second opinion on things.
- I generally start by checking the ticket channels I can remember I made, and then my last recent DMs for anything I've missed.
- Visit the Bug Tracker
- This is a new form of organisation I implemented to better track what needs to be completed visually.
- It is public info - check it out here. :)
- I start by seeing if there's stuff I already have fixed, and then marking those.
- I then attach myself to issues I can fix, and start working on those.
- Once I've finished/done what I can, I'll see what I can attach to other Staff members (if anything can be)
- Features and Fun Stuff
- What have I thought about implementing first/for the longest, can I get that done now?
- What else can we add?
Where the problem begins...!
There's a very important concept that I previously mentioned that I think most players gloss over, which is "done what I can". I will take the example of the very nasty persistent lag we've had over the past few weeks, and instability/downtime with Treasury and Business.
The problem with those plugins were very bad structural ones, I spent a lot of time chasing Ollie (our lead developer) and Andrew (also a developer!), to pass debugging information and spend time figuring out what is going wrong, but a lot of the time with plugin-related issues (like this one) that's all I can do. I grab relevant information, debug what I can, then pass it on and wait. That cycle repeats itself until we have a solution. I exhaust that cycle before I move on for the day because I rarely allow things to go incomplete.
It's no fun at the end of several hours of debugging to just end there, that's why as a reward I work on new features, and I think this is where players being to perceive incorrectly what I do.
A lot of the debugging work I do behind the scenes is just done silently because I usually have nothing much to say/share. There's a lot of issues I can't fix in one day, and with the case of Businesses and Treasury that was a several week-long effort. What I can do each day to mitigate the issue gets done, but after that I recognise I should be able to have some fun.
Unfortunately after doing silent debugging all day, and then jumping on to do features, it looks like all that time I invested was actually adding features/new things, which sucks because, no, it wasn't. :(
I'll probably post in server announcements (or #support?) temporarily what's been done on pressing issues like lag, things being offline etc. That way you can see that the work I do silently isn't so silent.
I also encourage you to check our bug tracker, I do a lot of my thinking there on bugs.
I'm going to be honest, 80% of my time as is, is spent on bug fixes/improving existing systems. This includes Staff and player relations in that 80% figure, and then the remaining 20% is the fun feature stuff. Don't get me wrong though, I do enjoy problem solving, which is largely in part why I do so much bug fixing.
The summer furniture expansion pack only took me ~30 minutes to implement!
I generally don't struggle to add features once I have an idea on how they work.
I've been working on Minecraft servers for a long time, it's almost always easier for me to add new features, this means when I when I get to doing them, I do them quite quick. That's why you see new things from me more often, I only need a little time to do a lot with features.
This is largely due to the nature of adding a new feature, when you fix a bug you're often tracing back and editing existing systems, with new features it's easier as you often only need to add, not tweak, pull apart and inspect!
The bugs I tackle however are usually more niche/have more moving parts. A lot of our simple problems have complicated issues, and they take a lot of time, that's the nature of IT you will find actually. :P
Concluding Thoughts
It's easy to see why players feel I don't give enough attention to the "big issues" or other bugs that face them, I empathise with how that may look. Hopefully with this blog post you can see that it isn't a case of my priorities being in the wrong order, rather that there's a mismatch in perception of what I do versus what I actually do.
A lot of the time I'm faced with bugs and issues that need a lot of time to solve. Between then, I like to keep myself engaged by adding new things!
Anyhow, hope you liked this form of long style yap, writing. I get told often that I write a lot, it's a therapeutic exercise for me haha!
- Yours Faithfully, Tech :)